With Hornsey Park are associated many interesting historic memories. It was, for instance, in it that the discontented nobles used to meet to concert measures against the hated favourite of Richard II., Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford. In its palace the Duchess of Gloucester and her confederates, the astrologer Richard Bolingbroke and the Rev. Canon Southwell, concocted the plot against the life of Henry VI., and it was there that the last-named was accused of invoking at the celebration of mass the blessing of God on the evil enterprise, an incident turned to account by Shakespeare in his play of _Henry VI_. Through Hornsey and Highgate rode Richard III. when still Duke of Gloucester, after the sudden death of Edward IV., accompanied by the doomed boy-king Edward V., and it was in the outskirts of the park that the royal procession was met by the mayor and corporation of London. Almost on the same spot Henry VII. was later welcomed by the loyal citizens of his capital on his way back from a successful expedition against Scotland, and there is a tradition that after the execution at Smithfield, in 1305, of the Scottish patriot Sir William Wallace, his dismembered remains were {39} allowed to rest for a night, on their way north, in the bishop's chapel. The ivy-clad tower, bearing the arms of Bishops Savage and Warham, who occupied the see of London, the former from 1497 to 1500, the latter from 1500 to 1504, is all that now remains of the ancient church of Hornsey that was founded at the end of the fifteenth century. The new building that was skilfully added on to the tower was begun in 1832, and is said to have been constructed of the materials of the bishop's palace. It contains little of interest except a kneeling effigy of a certain Francis Masters, a boy of about sixteen, and the monument to the Rev. Dr. Atterbury, removed from Highgate Chapel on its demolition, but in the churchyard is the tomb of the poet Samuel Rogers, who died in London in 1855. [Sidenote: Hendon] Hendon, which for many centuries has enjoyed the singular privilege, first granted in 1066, of immunity from all tolls, has retained far more of its ancient rural character than either Highgate or Hornsey, for in spite of the many modern villas that have of late years sprung up within its boundaries, it is still a village in touch with the open country. Its church, though not architecturally beautiful, is finely situated on a lofty hill, and its picturesque, well laid out churchyard, in which rest Nathaniel Hone the painter and Abraham Raimbach the engraver, commands a charming and extensive view, taking in Harrow, Edgware, Stanmore, Elstree, and Mill Hill, with the distant heights of Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. {40}